Opposable Thumbs —

Playing Halo 3 for keeps (or $10) with World Gaming

Tired of playing Halo 3 and Madden 09 for mere bragging rights? A new service …

It's amazing what happens to even a friendly game of... well, whatever when there's a few dollars on the line. Even a dollar bet gives you an emotional stake in a sporting event. World Gaming is hoping that gamers are ready to bet on their gaming prowess in order to chase that thrill, and the company has already had $176,000 wagered through its service. Do you think you're better than someone else at Halo 3? Are you ready to put down money to prove it?

Billy Levy, the president of World Gaming, spent the majority of his time in college gaming competitively, and often drove long distances to find the best talent to compete against. "It was around this time when I realized that there was no arena for all these competitive gamers to do what they love to do, yet with one twist—they need to be able to do it in the comfort of their own home," he told Ars.

Luckily, video games are games of skill, not chance. By law, what World Gaming offers is betting, not gambling.

"What we've done at WorldGaming.com is give players the opportunity to test their competition on a worldwide level with proper tournament organization and payouts. Now players only have to travel as far as their living room in order to compete in some of the most lucrative cash payouts in the history of gaming." Yes, but real money, bet over online console games? Levy is adamant: this is a safe and fun way to game... and to make money in a competitive atmosphere. We were more than a little skeptical when we began talking with him, but the deeper we dug, the more solid the concept became. Is the world ready for online wagering on virtual football games?

Whatcha playin'?

Right now World Gaming only offers a few games for betting and for its tournaments. Those are:

Now playing, XBOX 360

Halo 3

Madden 09

FIFA 09

NHL 09

NCAA Football 09

Now playing, PS3

Fight Night Round 3

Madden 09

Fifa 09

NHL 09

NCAA Football 09

Coming soon

Resistance: Fall of Man

MotorStorm 2

PGR4

GTA IV

Call of Duty

Gears of War 2

NBA 2k9

LA midnight Club

NBA LIVE 09

Warhawk

Lost Planet

And there are more titles coming.

There are two things a game has to offer for World Gaming to be able to allow betting on the outcome. "The first being the availability of statistical information from the game itself," Levy explained. "Does game 'X' offer any end of game data to ensure that WorldGaming.com can correctly identify a winner and a loser? This information is different on a developer-by-developer basis." In other words, World Gaming has to be able to independently verify the results of each game to make sure that the play is fair.

The other criteria is whether the game is competitive enough to be played by those wanting to play for money. For World Gaming, the obvious genres for that are racing, combat, and sports games.

Setting up games is an intuitive process. You can click on a specific's user's name and issue a challenge. So for instance, you can challenge someone to a round of Madden09 for a bet of $10. World Gaming stresses that you don't have to play for money and registration is free, but of course the main draw of the site is to make these cash wagers. You can also initiate an open challenge which any gamer can take. The game is played, the World Gaming servers verify the winner, and the money is transferred into or out of your account—minus a bit for the house, of course.

What happens if someone starts to lose and pulls the plug on the game? "In games where you believe an opponent intentionally disconnects a game, you should always choose to 'QUIT AND COUNT GAME’ where this option is available. You should report the event to customer service immediately with a detailed account of what happened," the site states. World Gaming claims that it will be able to determine if the disconnection was due to a game server issue or a deliberate, malicious disconnection and decide the outcome of the bet on a case-by-case basis and report back to the bettors.

But how is this legal?

"Just around the time we began seeking out investors for WorldGaming.com, UIGEA was passed," Levy told Ars. "I'm sure you can imagine how difficult it became for us overnight." The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 made it illegal to transfer funds from your bank or credit card company to online gambling sites. While the law is nearly impossible to enforce—online gambling sites are still alive and well and are happy to accept US dollars—World Gaming wasn't interested in dancing around legal definitions.

Luckily, video games are games of skill, not chance. By law, what World Gaming offers is betting, not gambling.

While the very idea of wagering online made investors skittish, Levy was confident about the protection UIGEA offers his company. "In reality, UIGEA gave Skilled Gaming the legitimacy it deserved over casino games. UIGEA clearly defined games of skill such as video games expressly legal," he told Ars.

"Most poker pros will argue that, over time, poker is a game of skill; however if I played a hand right now against a top poker pro and he had pocket aces and I had a pair of deuces there is still a chance that I could win the pot. Whereas with video games, the better player will win ten out of ten times against a lesser opponent."

The unintended consequence? The level of play is raised

When I began playing poker on Xbox Live a year or so ago, many people scoffed at the game, claiming the only real way to play poker is with real money on the line; it's the only way to get people to actually play the game as intended. Having even a little bit of money on the line keeps players on their game, forcing them to use real strategy and think through their moves. Having even $5 down on a game raises the level of play significantly, and sometimes even that amount isn't required.

We spoke with Jerrod Hansen, a Poker enthusiast in Japan who often plays online in $5 or $10 tournaments, about the phenomena. "I actually played in a 990-person penny tournament the other day," he told Ars. "The first few minutes were pretty sloppy with people shoving on everything, but once it got down to about 150 people, [with] the top 40 [getting] paid, it turned into a real poker game."

Hansen believes there's no comparison between even a $5 game and a "pretend-money" game. For Poker to work at all as a game of skill, money needs to be on the line, no matter how trivial the amount. Without the fear of losing money—or the possibility of winning money—player's make crazy plays, go all-in randomly; the game becomes so unpredictable as to be worthless. Add in a dollar? People start studying their cards and playing tighter.

"Why would an average gamer who only has one hour a night to devote to gaming just jump online and play a random gamer on Xbox Live or Play Station Network when they have no insight into their opponents online career other than their win/loss record?" Levy asks. "They don’t know if that person is going to scream into the headset the whole time, if they use in-game glitches, or if they are going to disconnect, so they essentially take that chance and risk being paired up against a problematic gamer rather than a competitive opponent in that only hour they have to game."

The idea is that by signing up and using the service, even without wagering, you'll increase the quality of your opponent. Put a dollar or two at stake? Suddenly you have an intense game that both parties are very interested in winning.

Is the world ready to gamble on gaming?

World Gaming requires you to be 18 to join the service, and the service allows you to use most major credit cards, as well as PayPal, to move money in and out of your account. My first thought: my wife would never like me to play online if real money were at stake... or at least she would forbid my normal beer or two during my late-night gaming sessions. Thrown controllers would also see a marked rise.

The average skill level on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network is already high, and when you self-select a population that is interested in playing for actual money you're going to see some very talented people playing at a very high level. We may not want to put money on those games, but we'd certainly want to watch them.